How to Build Competency Based Job Descriptions Correctly

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The world of work has sure changed a lot over the past few decades, but for many companies, job descriptions have remained pretty much the same.

At the same time, there’s an increasing recognition that they’re an important talent record and, done correctly, have the potential to serve as a central part of any talent management and HR programs.

That’s why many organizations these days are making use of competency based job descriptions. Competency based job descriptions add a layer of consistency and standardization to your traditional job description.

Most importantly, the competencies allow the job description to plug into almost every facet of your employees’ lifecycle — from the hiring process, to assessment programs, development plans, and beyond. So that old single-use document that gets stashed in a filing cabinet actually becomes a dynamic, key part of your HR programs and talent management strategy.

But before we get there, let’s start with the basics.

Hiring Assessment Development

Job Descriptions

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What Are Competencies in a Job Description? 4

List of Competencies for Job Descriptions 5

Competency Based Job Descriptions and Examples 6

How to Build Competency Based Job Descriptions 9

How Can They Be Used Throughout the Employee Lifecycle? 11

Using Software to Build Competency Based Job Descriptions 12

Table of Contents

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Competencies in a job description identify the desired, required skills and behaviors needed to perform a job successfully.

Competencies can identify required soft skills — for example, “attention to detail” or “fostering communication”. At HRSG, we call these behavioral competencies. But they often go beyond soft skills into technical skills needed for success in specialized roles, like sales, marketing or IT, for example. These more specific skills are generally referred to as technical competencies.

As mentioned, one reason that people use competencies on their job descriptions is that it unifies all descriptions and positions across the organization under a common framework. This provides structure to the organization’s HR programs, and allows HR personnel to get a much better grasp on the roles, levels, and dependencies between jobs in their organization.

Beyond that, adding competencies to your job descriptions opens up a new world of talent management possibilities.

With competencies on your descriptions, you can hire based on those competencies with specific behavioral interview questions; assess employees based on those competencies; build development plans; and use them to feed into career pathing tools that give employees a visual roadmap for advancement in your organization, heavily based on the competencies associated with each and every role in your company.

What Are Competencies in a Job Description?

Why Do People Use Competencies in Job Descriptions?

Job: Accountant

Summary

Responsibilities

Knowledge Areas

Education

Competencies

Accounting and Reporting Level 3

Attention to Detail Level 3

Fostering Communication Level 3

Auditing Level 2

Reconciliation and Analysis Level 2

Competencies

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• Corporate Technical Competencies

• Accounting & Finance Competencies• Business Operations Competencies• HR Competencies• IT Competencies• Marketing Competencies• Sales Competencies

• Industry Technical Competencies

• Accounting & Finance Industry Competencies• Agile Development Competencies• Central Banking Competencies• Cyber Security Competencies• Data Analytics Competencies• Digital Marketing Competencies• Legal Competencies• Network Competencies• Policing Competencies• Supply Chain Management Competencies

List of Competencies for Job Descriptions

Here are the competencies currently offered by HRSG. Click to view them:

Behavioral Competencies (examples: Achievement Orientation, Client Focus, Problem Solving)

Technical Competencies

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Competency Based Job Description Examples (Samples & Templates)Looking for some sample competency-based job descriptions? You’ve come to the right place. Check out this example of a Project Manager competency-based job description.

Job Summary

The Project Manager executes projects according to the project plan by working with stakeholders to understand requirements, developing project management plans, and maintaining project documentation.

Job level: Manager

Competencies

Project Management (Level 4)Planning, implementing, monitoring and completing projects, ensuring effective management of scope, resources, time, cost, quality, risk and communications.

Attention to Detail (Level 3)Working in a conscientious, consistent and thorough manner.

Responsibilities

Product & Project Management

• Execute the project according to the project plan• Develop project proposals, project charters, and project management plans• Work with project stakeholders to understand project requirements, and ensure that deliverables

satisfy these requirements• Clarify and communicate the project scope and ongoing progress to project team members• Engage project stakeholders and communicate project updates to ensure buy-in and project success• Monitor and track project execution against project plan and budget• Control and manage project execution to mitigate project risks• Ensure that all project estimates are prepared in accordance with the requirements of the project• Develop post-project support to ensure measurement of project objectives• Ensure that project decisions are formally documented and that project deliverables are stored in

the official project repository

Job Description: Project Manager

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Education

Certification

Knowledge Areas

• Business and Commerce (College diploma) or• Business Administration (College diploma)

• Lean Six Sigma-Black Belt• Project Management Professional (PMP)

• Agile Methodology (Intermediate)• Change Management (Intermediate)• Lean Project Management Principles (Intermediate)• Microsoft Office Suite (Intermediate)• Microsoft Project (Intermediate)• Microsoft SharePoint (Intermediate)• Microsoft Visio (Intermediate)• Project Management Software (Intermediate)• SAP (Intermediate)• Systems Development Life Cycle (SDLC) (Intermediate)

Competencies — Continued

Collaborating with Others (Level 3)Working together with others in a cooperative and supportive manner to achieve shared goals.

Managing Project Communications (Level 3)Managing, controlling and monitoring the nature of project information and communication directives to ensure that information needs are met.

Project Risk Management (Level 3)Identifying, assessing, prioritizing, documenting and managing risk and its impact.

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Check out some of our other examples. We’ve put together hiring guides for 8 key positions that contain real-world competency-based job descriptions, as well as interview questions based on those specific competencies that are embedded within the job description. We have hiring guides for:

Project ManagerCategory: Project & Product Management

Business Development Representative (BDR)Category: Sales

Marketing ManagerCategory: Marketing

AdministratorCategory: Administration

Graphic DesignerCategory: Marketing

Business Data AnalystCategory: Business Intelligence

Account ExecutiveCategory: Sales

Finance ManagerCategory: Accounting & Finance

Looking for more?

Just looking for a template to play around with? Download our blank competency based job description template instead.

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The traditional way of incorporating competencies and job descriptions involves a lot of back-and-forth between your HR team and other stakeholders (i.e. other people in the company). It starts with a competency library, which is usually purchased from a competency provider (like HRSG) or developed internally (which can be quite a time and resource-intensive process.)

With the competencies ready, it’s now time to decide which ones belong with which jobs. These may consist of core competencies that apply across the whole organization; departmental competencies, and specific technical competencies that apply to each role.

Usually you’ll end up with 3 to 10 competencies on a job description and these will consist of a mix of those technical (skill-based) competencies, and softer behavioral skills. Every competency consists of five levels to illustrate the proficiency needed when they’re applied to a specific job.

To illustrate this, let’s look at the example of a project manager vs. project assistant. They’ll share many of the same general, behavioral competencies; but if we look at the levels required for success, and the

more job-specific competencies, we see the differences between the two roles emerge.

Identifying these competencies, and the appropriate levels for individual roles, can be a pretty time-consuming process. Often, you’ll need many people involved in the process from start-to-finish: this may include any or all of subject matter experts, managers, c-level executives who want a say in the process, the employee themselves, and potentially others.

In other words, while the benefits of competency-based job descriptions are substantial, the traditional process of putting them together can be fairly painful.

How to Build Competency Based Job DescriptionsThere are two main ways to build competency based job descriptions. Let’s start with the traditional way, and then we’ll look at how companies are utilizing technology to speed up the process substantially.

The Traditional Way:

Level

03

03

03

03

03

03

04

04

PROJECT MANAGER Level

02

02

01

02

01

01

02

02

Analytical Thinking

Communications Management

Project Planning

Quality Focus

Teamwork

PROJECT ASSISTANT

Achievement Orientation

Adaptabilty

Client Focus

CORE

Achievement Orientation

Adaptabilty

Client Focus

JOB

FAM

ILY Analytical Thinking

Communications Management

Project Planning

Project Risk Management

Resource ManagementSPEC

IFIC

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So let’s look at the modern way that companies are mapping competencies to their job descriptions. The modern method essentially uses all the same tactics, but streamlines the process incredibly through the use of purpose-built software technology.

Click the image below to check out the Smart Job Descriptions video to get a sense of how, using HRSG’s software, you can create competency-based “Smart Job Descriptions” in minutes for your organization.

Technology has enabled a much more accessible process, so that a wider array of organizations can take advantage of the benefits of competency based job descriptions. Here’s a table to sum up the main differences in the process of mapping competencies:

The old way to build competency based job descriptions:

The modern way to build competency based job descriptions, using software:

Build competencies from scratch, consulting engagement to develop custom ones, or buy pre-built paper dictionaries.

Purchase banks of competencies, get them delivered within cloud software.

Engage in exhaustive manual consultation with multiple stakeholders to define core, departmental and job-specific competencies.

Dispatch a competency profiling survey to identify competencies.

Meticulously map competencies to all jobs in your organization.

Map competencies using AI to find the most relevant suggested competencies for a role.

The Modern Way:

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Hiring & Selection: This comes down to being able to carry out structured, behavioral interviews, with questions based directly on the required skills and behaviors. That way, interviews are carried out in a structured, consistent manner… and your company’s hiring decisions are made based on consistent criteria.

Assessment & Development: Again, the competencies on the “smart” job descriptions allow the actual job description to play a central role in your assessment programs. This may take the form of self-assessment, supervisor assessment, or the ever-popular 360 assessment, often used in leadership roles. If gaps are identified, the organization can provide employees with learning resources pre-mapped to competencies to develop and strengthen those gaps.

Engagement & Retention: One of the most powerful motivators to keep top employees engaged is opportunities for growth. With your competencies mapped to every job, there’s total transparency on exactly what skills and behaviors, at what levels, your people need to demonstrate in order to take their next step (or even reach their dream job).

So, once you’ve got competency based job descriptions in place, how do you use them to elevate your process and empower your employees?

Let’s explore this idea, captured in this post at TalentCulture.com:

Cover Photo by Shridhar Gupta on Unsplash

How Can Competency Based Job Descriptions Be Used Throughout the Employee Lifecycle?

About HRSGFor three decades, HRSG has delivered products and services to define talent needs, address skill deficiencies and improve individual and organizational performance.

Our Products division has distilled that 30 years of expertise into a competency, job description and career management software solution. Leveraging the power of AI, CompetencyCore™ is unlike any other product on the market, bringing together the power of competencies and the utility of job descriptions.

Our Talent Management Solutions division delivers best practice professional services in competency-based management, testing and assessment. In addition, we train HR professionals worldwide in our competency-based management methodologies.

To learn more about how HRSG’s software makes HR professionals proactive and in-control, visit us at

www.hrsg.ca or call 1-866-574-7041 x600.

© Human Resource Systems Group. All rights reserved. Tel: 1-866-574-7041 www.hrsg.ca info@hrsg.ca

Hands down, the easiest way to build competency based job descriptions at scale is by using purpose-built job description software.

HRSG’s CompetencyCore platform allows you to map competencies to your jobs with the click of a mouse, using advanced AI technology.

Using Software to Build Competency Based Job Descriptions

Get your demo today to see it in action for yourself.